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Vote me, I support Corbyn – A hollow battlecry

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Telling someone you’re a Corbyn supporter so they should get your vote is not enough, taking a vote for granted because you say you’re a socialist is not enough. There needs to be more, much more in order to galvanise the kind of support we need at grassroots level.

That means setting out a local vision, working within local communities and building an (at first) informal bottom up structure within our local constituency. The internal struggle within the CLP over Corbyn is one huge distraction, it’s a movement – it isn’t about Corbyn, it isn’t even about the Labour Party *gasp*. It is about that hungry person you passed on your way to work, or that homeless person you see outside your local shop, it is about a single mother facing eviction, or an elderly person that dies because of winter. It is about those suffering at the bottom, and the more we get bedded to internal struggles, the more we let them down, the more we look internally, the less we are doing externally.

So don’t expect people to support you just because you support Corbyn, or just because you’re a socialist. You need to prove to the people that you are worthy of their support, you need to show them, with your actions not just your words that you are on their side, and that they can rely on you to fight with and for them.

The vote me because I support Corbyn message is unsustainable (Corbyn won’t be here forever), while it will galvanise us to a degree, it can’t go much further than that. I want to vote for a local candidate whether that is in an internal election, a local election or a general election because I like what they’re having to say, I like where they want to take my community and I can see through their track record that they’re trustworthy – they mean what they’re saying.

If we want to transform our communities we can’t rely on Corbyn, we can’t wait until the next GE. The power to transform our communities is with all of us, the power of the movement is not with one man at the top, but all those engaged in the struggle. Less vote me because I support Corbyn, and more tapping in to that message of hope and unity that he brought to the mainstream.

Now is our chance, so let us harness the energy Corbyn has unleashed and utilise the message, but let us take ownership of it and make it our own. Make it local, make it relevant, take it and make it part of the DNA of our communities.

I could see the necessity when Labour were in a full blown civil war, but we have won that war, it is now time to win the peace.